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Monday, 28 September 2015

Smokey Mountain Lacquers - American Horror Story for Halloween 2015

Hi Goddesses

I have a CRACKING collection for you today! I've wanted to try Smokey Mountain Lacquers for the longest time and I was delighted when Kim offered to send me her new Halloween collection, inspired by one of my favourite TV series - American Horror Story. There are 6 polishes - cremes, shimmers, glitters - and all of them draw expertly on their inspiration.

We start with Earthly Mother, a 4 colour glitter inspired by one of my favourite AHS characters, Misty Day from Coven. Misty is a witch obsessed with Steve Nicks, and this polish draws on some of her swampland colourography.

This is a blend of green, orange, purple and gold glitters, and I particularly love that it contains squares (my glitter weakness). I used about 3 layers on my ring finger to see how it would build. Application was easy, no fishing required, and I layered it over ....

..... Innocence, inspired by Pepper from Asylum and Freak Show. I have to admit, I haven't watched Freak Show yet, but Pepper is certainly a memorable character!

This polish was probably my favourite of the 6. It's a divine pale grey creme, swathed with pale blue shimmer and it's just stunning, utterly stunning. My only caution is that the amount of shimmer in it does require a bit of effort to remove (less effort than a glitter though), but as long as you're prepared with your peel off base coat, this is Oh So Worth It.

Latex Fetish references perhaps THE most iconic image from AHS - the scary man from Season 1. Part of what made him so frightening is that for a large part of the series, no one knew if he was real or not - a great exercise in terror.

Kim has captured this perfectly. This is the only polish I am wearing without top coat as I wanted to show you how shiny it was on its own. This needed 3 coats, but only I think because the bottle was new. I am sure this will be a 2-coater after a couple of uses.

Little One was a story I was unfamiliar with - La Petite from Freak Show. When I was Googling images, I was really struck by how well Kim had translated this character into polish.

This is a lovely baby pink flecked with silvery-pink shimmer. It's not my kind of colour, but I do love the formula and effect of this one. Beautiful and light.

Now we have my other favourite - Lounge Singer. This is based on the character Lady Gaga will be playing in Hotel. Personally, this also reminds me a lot of Misty Day's swamps and her magic mud.

This is just a breathtaking polish. Offically it's a black crelly with gold shimmer, but on the nail it looks like darkest olive, splattered with gold, and I'm happy with that.

It's a perfect fall colour, and looks great matte-d too. Bonus - I was sad to throw out Mentality Overcast, and this looks a very close replacement. Stunning.

And finally, Soulless, inspired by the brilliant Fiona in Coven. This is a red crelly with black dots and skulls, but that's only half the story.

The red is particularly shimmery and electric, although not quite as electric as my camera would have you believe. This was the only one that was tricky to apply - the polish was a little jam like - but as you can see, it evened out beautifully after 3 coats. Personally, I'm not a fan of the skulls, but hey, it's Halloween! And I swear, this polish is so alive it BREATHES.

Overall, this is a really good, diverse collection. I loved the brush, and for the most part, application was effortless. As I mentioned, Soulless was the only one that was a bit tricky, but that's the nature of that type of polish beast.

These polishes launch on Friday October 2nd at Kim's store HERE and were sent to me for my honest review. Stay tuned during the week for some AHS nail art to go with Little One, Innocence and Soulless.